Why Navigation Buttons Aren’t Enough

When creating a website, it’s easy to focus on the graphic design and on-page SEO elements that creating an integrated site gets lost. But it’s imperative that it does not. Interlinks—textual links between pages on your site—are still vital to the success of your website in the search engine rankings and with your viewers.

Interlinks Are User Friendly

Today’s websites almost always have a top navigation menu bar with attractive buttons that allow users to “jump” to specific areas. It’s tempting to rely on buttons alone. After all, that visually appealing navigation bar is at the top of every page, right?. And, many websites have left-side menus, too. So, are interlinks still necessary?

Yes!

Not to insult today’s Internet users, but they’re a lazy bunch. Think about it—users are getting on the Internet so that they do not have to make a phone call or get in their cars to get what they need. They get impatient when pages take longer than ½ a second to load. They want the information they want at their fingertips NOW.

So why would such a group of people want to take the time and energy to scroll all the way back up to the top of the page where your navigation buttons are to find where else on your site they can find additional information or complete an order? If they’re going to put in that effort, why not just find another website (like your competitor’s!) completely?

Interlinks mean they don’t have to. When something piques their interest, they simply have to twitch some muscle fibers in their finger to click the mouse and voila! they are on a new page…but still on your web property!

Interlinks Are Crawler Friendly

Interlinks are not just convenient tools for human users. They make indexing your website easier for search engines, too…and that can boost your rankings.

Interlinks create “secret passageways” for search engine algorithms to move through your site. Think about it this way: a website with no interlinks is like a building with only a front door and hallway connecting to each room (your individual web pages). To find out what each page is about, the crawler has to jump out the window of the room it was in and go back to the front door, enter and find a new room to explore. That significantly slows down exploration (i.e. indexing) of your site.

But, if you have secret passageways between all the rooms, the crawler enters the front door once, and then explores freely the world of interconnected rooms, hallways and cubbies. It can find itself back in a room it already explored, but if you have remodeled (updated content or images) in the meantime, it will log the changes.

Interlinks…Check!

Every website we create applies all SEO best practices, including interlinking all web page content. We do everything we can to ensure your human users and search engine crawlers have the best website experience to boost performance in organic search engine results.